10.3886/ICPSR21662.v1Kohn, Melvin L.Longitudinal Data on Social Structure and Personality, Based on Interviews With a Random Sample of Men and Women Living in the Urban Areas of Ukraine in 1992-1993, and Re-interviews With a Subsample in 1996Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research2008capitalismemploymentpersonalitysocial changesocialismsocial structureunemployment2008-04-012008-04-011992--19931996
Survey
216621This study investigates the relationships of social
structure and personality during a period of radical social change
attendant on the early stages of the transformation of Ukraine from
socialism to nascent capitalism. It does so by analyzing data secured
from face-to-face interviews with a representative sample of urban
Ukrainian men and women in 1992-1993, together with a follow-up survey
three to three and a half years later of all those respondents who at
the time of the initial survey were either employed or were seeking
paid employment. The Study found that the over-time correlations --
the stabilities -- of two underlying dimensions of personality's
self-directedness of orientation and a sense of well-being or distress
were startlingly low, by comparison not only to the United States at a
time of much greater social stability, but also to Poland at the same
time as the Ukrainian study, albeit at a later stage of transition.
The stability of a third fundamental dimension of personality --
intellectual flexibility -- was higher than those of self-directedness
of orientation and distress, but considerably lower than past research
had led us to expect. Still, despite rapidly changing social and
economic conditions and great instability of personality, the
fundamental relationships of social structure with personality were
remarkably consistent over time and, with the partial exception of
those with the sense of well-being or distress, were quite similar to
those of both socialist and advanced capitalist societies during times
of apparent social stability. The analyses suggest that consistency in
the relationships between social structure and personality despite
great change both in social structure and in personality results from
the continued stability of proximate conditions of life that link
position in the larger social structure to individual personality and
the continued strength of those linkages. Notable among these
proximate conditions, for those people who were employed at the times
of both the baseline and follow-up surveys, is the substantive
complexity of their work. Respondents were asked to describe their
current occupations and job titles and to comment on whether they were
satisfied with their jobs and whether they had worked more than one
job at a time. Other questions included the number of hours the
respondent spent reading, writing, cooking, interacting with family
members, socializing with friends or family, and performing household
chores. Demographic variables include the respondent's age, sex,
birthplace, marital status, education, parents' education, number of
children, ages of children, occupation, nationality, religious
affiliation, and native language.